Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

4.5 stars

I'll be the first to admit that I agree with some of the plaints of this novel's detractors and dissectors: Nathan Hill's often-precocious writing style (trying really hard to emulate Franzen and DF Wallace); blatant audience pandering (trying to please the gamut of readers from YA-friendlies and gaming nerds to (recent) history-philes and magical realists); and a tendency to meander down myriad and inconsequential plot threads and stray from the important ones. Yet, despite its flaws, I really ate up Hill's debut novel, The Nix. I'm not sure if it's the book's fortuitous timing (released months before the insane circus that is the 2016 US Presidential election) or having utterly appealing, utterly flawed characters I thoroughly relate to, but I could not stop reading, and laughing, and shedding a tear (or twenty).

The story pogos everywhere, spanning roughly six decades and two continents, but all plot threads ultimately lead to 2010 and Samuel Andresen-Anderson (an English prof at a low tier college outside Chicago, an aspiring author with only a Choose Your Own Adventure-esque short story to his writing credit, and a Level umpty-thousand elf on Elfscape, a MMORPG he devotes most of his non-working waking hours to); and his mom, Faye Andresen-Anderson (a mousy, Iowa raised former U of Chicago student and Vietnam War protestor, who abandoned her son and husband in the late '80s, presumably under the influence of The Nix, a Norwegian ghosty-wraith). When Samuel inadvertenly catches a newscast of his mom chucking rocks at an ultra-conservative presidential candidate (turning herself overnight into an internet sensation), it prompts Samuel's literary agent to get the rock-throwing terrorist's abandoned son to write a lurid tell-all.

Then the story back-and-forths between son Samuel and mother Faye, filling in the blanks (Samuel's childhood, Faye's high school and college days) to let the reader know why Samuel's the milquetoast-y gaming slug he is, and why Faye's the irresponsible parent/rock chucker she is. Plenty of memorable supporting characters round out the mix of The Nix, like plagiarist student (of Samuel's) Laura, fellow online gamer Pwnage, the twin "B"s; Faye's fellow protestors Alice and Sebastian, her Norwegian father (and napalm producer) Frank. And, of course, that nix (and maybe even, that Nix, too (good old Tricky Dick himself)).

This book is so stuffed to the gills, it's hard to be enamored of the 640-page length (and more than a few times I thought "did he really have to include that?" or "Did he really need to write a thirteen page-long sentence on the ills of role-playing computer games?" (for instance) but I can overlook sins of commission when the overall output is so engaging, funny, sad, and (mostly) relevant. This reminded me a bit of the last super highly-anticipated novel I read, Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire (another problematic doorstopper that I really liked). Despite Nathan Hill's frequent flights of fancy, I liked The Nix quite a bit more than City on Fire (which I gave 4 stars). Nowhere to go but up from there, hence the 4.5 stars, rounded up. Wouldn't be a bit surprised if it won an award or two (ahem, stodgy Pulitzer Panel, I got my eyes on y'all). Flawed, but all kinds of fun.